Astartes of the Bear School

Chapter 2044 2016. Hidden Exploration
But his troubled look made Margarita laugh. She didn't know anything about Black Knife Assassins, but she knew Cassandra.

"It's no use thinking about it." The sorceress shrugged. "Your lover is full of energy. Tessaya mentioned that I should bring a more capable helper. I thought of her, but unfortunately, she's been disappearing around Fujian City like a ghost, gone for days or weeks at a time. She's the only one who comes back to contact others. I can't find her even after I teleport there."

“Cassandra isn’t the type to sit still either.” Lann shrugged, taking Margarita’s teasing to heart.

Then, he turned to look at the calico kitten sitting on the unicorn's rear end.

"We're out of options, you little velvet ball. Let's just go for it. We can handle walking through blood, right?

"Leave it to me, meow!" The kitten immediately puffed out its chest, raised its head, and jumped up with its hands on its hips, looking very proud. "This smell is nothing at all. Back in the day, our thief adventure group specifically went into the Miasma Valley of the New World, meow!"

The plush ball is half Palico and half Detl lynx, native to the New World.

To be precise, they are the Deter Lynx, a valley raider tribe whose territory is the Miasma Valley.

Therefore, thanks to its connections in the local area, the small team it led mostly operated within the Valley of Miasma.

That was a vast graveyard for creatures of the New World, where countless corpses fermented and rotted over the years.

The so-called 'miasma' there is actually flesh-eating microorganisms that multiply in large numbers under special conditions.

It's easy to imagine how terrible the environment there must be, but the velvet ball, who was able to thrive there, didn't find the blood lake and smell unacceptable at all.

"No, that's not what I'm worried about."

Lan En curled his lip at the velvet ball.

Although the curse of the ancient leopard head prevented the Velvet Ball from returning to its homeland, the Rotten Vale, and the Coral Highlands above it.

However, Lann was quite at ease with the fact that Pompom was a natural hunting cat.

"I mean, can your stealth footwork be used to walk in water?"

Faced with his boss's question, the plush ball looked at him with innocent big eyes, while the cat tilted its head and looked at him.

"Boss, the 'Lone Shadow Ninja Techniques Manual'... I've always been the one practicing it better, right, meow?"

"In this project, you're the challenger, meow!"

The velvet ball was very spirited, which Lan En thought was a good thing.

“You all stay here,” Lan En turned to Qilin and the others and instructed them, “Don’t move until I and Rongbuqiu have explored this area and found Michaela’s exact location.”

"Hide yourselves. Even if those things on the Blood Lake pass by, refrain from attacking. Rita."

He gave Margarita an extra nod, and without saying a word, the sorceress understood his meaning.

The chaotic magic stored in the magical jewelry had just been replenished into the body when it was used again.

Margarita isn't good at illusions, but creating a simple illusion is no problem for her.

She made the shadow of the stone protruding from the blood lake so thick and heavy that, in the strange underground environment resembling eternal night, the entire stone appeared to be completely black due to its material, and thus went unnoticed.

Once Lan En saw that they were well hidden, he took the velvet ball and walked down the rock, disappearing back into the blood mist.

Fluffy Ball and Lan En remained expressionless in the face of the slippery feel under their feet and the disgusting smell.

The velvet ball's resume goes without saying, and Lann is no slouch as a demon hunter either.

Before he rose to fame, witchers in the magical medieval world were always considered a lowly profession.

Sewers, garbage dumps... these are places that easily attract monsters and are their usual workplaces.

The garbage and odors produced by human-populated cities are no fresher than the blood lake before us.

Besides, he had lived for months in King's Landing, a city with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants and no sewer system, so why would he be afraid of this?
Both the Witcher and the Palico have practiced stealth footwork and light breathing techniques. Lann even taught them to Phoebus from the ancient Greek world. It's unknown what level of skill the little girl will achieve in the future.

However, walking silently in water is a fairly basic skill, and the Blood Lake is not flowing water, so there is no water flow to cause any disturbance.

Lan En strode ahead, while the velvet ball took small steps but moved its short legs quickly, following behind Lan En, looking left and right warily as it went.

Lann's Eagle Vision is a very suitable ability at this moment.

The blood mist obstructed his vision. Although his eyes had been enhanced through Space Marine surgery, the enhancement was to improve his vision, not to grant him X-ray vision.

The fog is just a barrier.

However, eagle vision, which is like a radar wave, is very useful in this situation.

He passed through the hazy, bloody mist, mingling with the indistinct figures of the crowd.

Lan En got a clear look at these people.

They are the sons of platinum, and more like the frogs.

However, compared to the Platinum Children that Lan En saw in Lienia, the Platinum Children in this Blood Lake seem to have mutated due to the blood.

Their originally dark silver metallic skin, which was almost unlike that of normal creatures, turned into a bright red blood color here.

Although it's still not quite normal, at least it has some of the texture of a living, breathing creature.

Furthermore, on their round heads, some horns, like sprouting buds, were emerging from the tops. To the eagle's eye, those small horns were particularly striking on the Platinum Sons.

It seems to confirm the old saying passed down in the border region: the horn, this organ, is the gathering place of spirituality.

However, whether the power of the Mother of Truth's blood has a positive or negative impact on the Platinum Child is not a primary research topic for Lan En at present.

Lan En stopped beside a large tree whose roots were buried beneath a lake of blood.

The lake was blood red, while the tree was as white as dried bones.

The plush ball continued to look around warily, diligently following Lan En with its small, quick steps. But when it reached Lan En's level, the Witcher reached out and stopped it.

The plush ball didn't see what was in front of it when it looked around, which shows its trust in its leader.

Because of this trust, the calico kitten did not make a sound when Lan En suddenly stopped it.

She wasn't surprised; she simply looked up at the Witcher with a questioning gaze.

Lan En silently pointed to his head.

The velvet ball looked up following his finger.

On the branches of this bony, withered tree, amidst the interlacing shadows, stood a gigantic figure.

It was a giant black crow, six or seven meters tall!

Its head was abnormally large, and its beak was covered with jagged, interlocking teeth. When it opened its mouth from time to time, it was enough to make one's scalp tingle.

Blood dripped continuously from its messy, sparse feathers, but no one knew where the blood was coming from.

There's no need to get entangled with such a brainless beast.

Lan En pressed down on his projectile, and with a 'thud,' a stone crashed into the blood lake a hundred meters away from the tree.

The giant crow in the tree immediately let out a frantic cawing, then flapped its body, which couldn't fly at all, and rushed towards that place.

Along the way, two sharp bird claws gripped the blood lake, tearing the rocks beneath it to pieces, sending them flying everywhere.

The Witcher and Palico, who had been standing under the tree from the beginning, using their skills to conceal their presence and movements, only continued forward after the foolish crow hopped away in a frenzy.

There are quite a few good things in this blood lake. It seems that in addition to the blood flowing from the Mother of Truth, the people here have also brought a lot of creatures from outside to bleed.

Lan En also picked up some forging stones, which were of better quality than the average ones in the hands of the demigod alliance.

Additionally, on another rock in the Blood Lake, the velvet ball discovered a small golden bud.

The illusory energy bud was made entirely of golden light and looked about the size of a blade of grass, but its sacred nature was beyond question.

These were the seeds of the Golden Tree that were scattered and launched when everything took a sharp turn for the worse, Queen Marika smashed the Elden Ring, and the Golden Tree began to save itself under the pressure of survival.

Unexpectedly, this thing pierced through the bottom layer and fell down from this deep crust.

The velvet ball looked up at the Witcher, as if asking if it could take the golden seed and put it into its red dewdrop chalice.

Lan En casually waved his hand, and the kitten immediately dug around and found a golden seed.

The problem at the border is that the Golden Tree didn't die after the magic ring shattered; instead, it sealed itself off, making it impossible for anyone who wants to enter and repair the magic ring to escape without first confronting the Golden Tree's resistance and obstacles to the outside world.

Those who now understand the truth and want to take action only complain that the power of the Golden Tree is too strong, and these seeds are no longer of any concern.

Upon reaching this location, Lan En and his companion discovered that the site of this blood lake was actually an isolated island in an underground world.

The Witcher underestimated the size of the underground void in the borderlands.

The entire area they were in consisted of a single, upright stone pillar that rose from an unknown depth underground.

Standing on the edge and looking down, you can't see the bottom at all.

Looking into the distance, Lan En, with his enhanced vision, could see a piece of land that could be called a continent compared to the 'island' beneath his feet, at least several thousand meters away.

The vegetation above was lush, and his [Lyman's Ear] could even hear the sound of flowing water in that direction.

Presumably, that must be the Shifra River, and the ecosystem that has developed along with it.

In this illusory starry sky underground, both lands seem to float in mid-air, dreamlike and unreal.

Lan En didn't look at the vast land in the distance any longer, and turned to continue exploring deeper into the distance with the velvet ball, keeping their tracks hidden.

Soon, they discovered traces of human intervention in the blood lake and among the rocks.

Torina is right; this is indeed a relic from the Eternal City era, not a natural underground island.

At the highest point of this isolated island, a desolate temple, resembling the style of ancient Greece, appeared before Lann and the Velvet Ball.

Large, cut stones were used to pave the ground, and not a single drop of blood could be seen around them.

But the smell of blood was even stronger.

(End of this chapter)